Update from the Arctic

Update from the Arctic

They finally dished out computer passwords! It is very slow though, and hard to get to the computer in the evenings. All is well in the ice and everything on board is quite relaxed, so I think it is going to be a nice cruise. The journey over here was horrible though! The ship has no keel and rolls to about 40 degrees!

A couple of photos of the midnight sun…

We are now in thick ice with big pressure ridges, and the ship pretty much can’t get any further, so they are going to moor to a big ice floe and start the 5-day drift station.

I saw my first Polar bear! :- ). Quite a long way away – but managed to get some photographic evidence of it. I think there are quite a few around, as I also saw some foot-prints in an iceflow that the ship broke throught. I wish I got a photo of that!

Today I got in the helicopter at about 9.30 and don’t think we landed back on the ship until about 19:30. Lots of flying around to find leads for the ship through the ice, and also two landings for CTD’s.

We had to spend some time following polar bear foot prints in one area to check the bear was not hiding near! Then we actually landed on his trail, so I got to put my boot in one of his footprints – very yeti like! :-). There’s millions of the beasties, but don’t worry – I’m fairly sure I’m not the slowest runner in the group!…

These pictures are from mooring the ship to an ice flow this evening.

I have to be up at 7:30 tomorrow, so that’s all my news for now!

Paul is at sea

Paul is at sea

Paul is away at sea until 2nd June. The reality of this statement suddenly dawned on me this afternoon as I scribbled a note to stick on my office door. I have less than 48 hours left on dry land! On Wednesday afternoon I will join the Norwegian Coast Guard ship KV Svalbard and head towards Fram Strait where my friends at the Norwegian Polar Institute and I plan to collect measurements to determine how much freshwater (from precipitation and melting ice) is flowing out of the Arctic Ocean. I’ve posted a map below that shows roughly where we’ll be going.

The ship is alongside in Breivika (Tromsø’s docks) at the moment and I went to have a look on my way home from work this afternoon. My first impression is that it has very few windows! – but that’s not all bad with 24 hour daylight. I should have internet access onboard and plan to post some more updates from much further north…

Snowshoeing up Grønnlibruna

Snowshoeing up Grønnlibruna

Last Sunday we planned another attempt to the top of Tromsdalstinden (a.k.a. “The Beast…) but we decided to abandon that plan when we found out it was an extremely windy day. Tromsdalstinden was not actually visible (despite clear skies) because of all the blowing snow! Instead we drove to a village called Straumsbukta. We found a valley on the map that looked like it should be out of the wind. And indeed it was 🙂

The valley is very beautiful. In Summer there are marshes, now just mostly big empty spaces. We didn’t ski this time, we used the army snowshoes that Paul bought a few weeks ago for a bargain price. I am not exactly “army-sized” so they are a bit big for me but they work fine!

The second photo (below) is taken on the hill. Going steeply uphill is not that easy with such big snowshoes, and quite tiring – the trees became my best friend 😉 good for a little break.

In the middle of the forest we found tracks. We assumed from a skier, but when we looked closely, they were from a moose! Wow he made such deep tracks, very impressive! The tracks looked quite recent but we didn’t get to meet Mr Moose himself…

In the other photo I am trying to work out where we are… we actually climbed up quite a bit higher than we thought. Nice 😉

We had a nice view over the valley and the sunset – these photos are taken at 19:30, it’s getting very light up here these days.

We reached the top of Petterbolhaugen, at 367m. Click on the left photo to see what the army snowshoes are like! They actually have good bindings and quite good grip.

I was quite tired by the time we got up there, but we found that Grønnlibruna (400m) was blocking our view of Tromsø… and it was not that much further… so even though it was late, we decided to continue. It didn’t take that long, and the view of Tromsø was nice indeed. Unfortunately it had gotten too dark for good photos by then though. We got back to the car very late, and quite exhausted, but it was a nice trip!

Time is flying, and I’m soon going back to Norwich for a while. Paul is preparing to go to sea until early June, a very long cruise! They do get a few days off in the middle, at Spitsbergen, and I decided to fly up there as well, I’m very excited about going there!!

Spring has also arrived to Tromsø, even if it still looks very wintry. The constant dripping of the snow melting is getting louder and louder. Many of the streets are snow/ice free now – makes walking a lot easier 🙂 The birds are coming back as well, which is really nice. I’m passing through Tromsø on my way to Spitsbergen in early May, will be interesting to see the changes by then!